


A Sliver of Paradise

by aimlessAnemone



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-03-25 16:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimlessAnemone/pseuds/aimlessAnemone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a super serious heartfelt Jacob/Edward fic. I've poured my soul into it. My soul has hardened like concrete around the blessed pairing, and I hope to breathe life into this underdocumented beauty. Also, Bella gets a happy ending eventually (oops, that was a spoiler). There's gonna be time travel maybe and other...surprises. Just wait and see! ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            Bella had left without him again. Edward sighed a sigh that would have been indistinct from the sigh of a daytime soap opera star on the verge of his third convoluted death in the series, save for the lack of actual drama he was at that moment experiencing. She was becoming more distant, and it was very apparent to Edward in the way she would ‘stay after school for student council’ and ‘go to the movies with Jessica and Angela on the weekends’ and spend long hours ‘studying for SATs in the library’ lately. It was incredibly fishy, and Edward had never taken his beau for a mermaid.

            “She’s got to be with the whelp-dog-mutt-smell-dog-thing-person-jerk-dude again,” Edward muttered, as he made a fist and gently tapped it on the cool wood of the grand piano in his room. Even though he was mad, he couldn’t risk injuring his instrument. Really, it was all he had that could propel his legacy into the future. He just needed to pound out the right keys in the right sequence. It was coming. He’d have a devastatingly beautiful piece eventually, but not now. The time was ripe for taking action, and Edward didn’t want to think about Jacob and Bella meeting in a clandestine grove to proclaim their everlasting love and make sweet music together any longer. He headed into the hallway to pick up Bella’s scent.

            Edward was marvelous at tracking people by their particular smell, but really, he always assured those who admired him that “all tracking requires is a nose and vampire senses and a severe inferiority complex over Jasper beating me at hide-and-seek each time we’ve played it in the last century—“ At this point, he would always stop mid-sentence, and the red blush of embarrassment would have prickled his face if he had any blood to spare for that purpose.

          Within minutes he found her trace. It snaked through the hallways of their home and out the back door onto the mossy carpet of the woods. He crouched to put his nose as close to the ground as possible and took a liberal whiff of a shoeprint embedded in a patch of _Racomitrium_. He inhaled a bit of bryophyte in the process. “That snotty werewolf!” he muttered as he covered the free nostril with a finger to blow the plant piece out. Edward shook his head, but continued his search. He crawled through part of the sweeping Cullen backyard in this manner, and ended up back on the porch when her scent converged with another. 

            “I KNEW IT! I knew that furry lupine idiot was behind this! This is a wet dog scent if I ever smelled one!” Edward, had, in fact, smelled a few wet dogs in his lifetime. The memory doesn’t really leave a person. “Dog. Smelly mutt,” he continued. “You think you can just rendezvous with my vampire girlfriend whenever you choose? This dalliance must end.” Edward spat on a muddy footprint. “Now.”

            Careful not to step in his own saliva, Edward bounded off the porch and somersaulted in the air before landing once again in the shady backyard. “I shall have a dram of your blood in a vial for my collection, Jacob!” the glimmering hottie screamed as he shook an errant fist at the pine trees.

            “EDWARD!” He froze. “Stop yelling! You’re going to wake the neighbors!” The boyish vampire spun around and pinpointed an open window on the third floor from where the voice seemed to originate. He scowled a vampire scowl.

            “Mom, okay, listen: we don’t HAVE any neighbors! We live in the middle of the woods somewhere in rural Washington state! We have bears! The bears are our neighbors, Mom! The bears don’t care if I yell! As a matter of fact, the bears have told me they love hearing my voice and it is very calming for them when they’re having bad bear-days! Okay, Mom?!” Edward pouted at that moment in a manner the bears would have so very much enjoyed had they been awake to see it.

            “I can’t argue with that logic, son, but you’re giving me a headache. Why don’t you go rabble rouse with that friend you’re always talking about; Caleb? Jared? You kids have so much energy these days.”

            “MOM, I’ve told you a million times! _Jacob_ is my mortal enemy except for the fact that we’re immortal so really he’s my immortal enemy— _but I digress_ ; we are not friends and never will be! In fact, I think he’s stolen my Bella!”

            “Oh, Bella? I think she’s at a student council meeting with Angela and Jessica.”

            “That’s exactly the point, Mother. You wouldn’t understand. I must go now!” Edward started toward town in an angry jog. Esme watched, and figured he hadn’t activated his super speed abilities in order to emphasize each heavy clomp into the forest floor. She sighed, and closed the window. _I’m sure glad vampires don’t actually get headaches_ , she thought to herself, chuckling.


	2. Sometimes you gotta think fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is up to Bella to save the day and salvage her best friends' relationship with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been gently crafting this work for 2 years. Don't judge. Also, I decided not to edit it because my genius need not be censored by 'common sense' or 'grammatical continuity.'

            A chair squeaked. A pencil tapped impatiently on one of the desks arranged in a large circle in the otherwise silent classroom. The student council prom venue debate had become so heated that opposing members had exhausted speech. Too angry and flustered to even exchange eye contact without snarling, Jessica Stanley and Angela Weber sat as far away from each other as they possibly could while at adjacent desks. Junior student council members flanked the girls, ready to catch them should either one go too far and topple off the chair. Bella counted herself lucky that the only desk that wasn’t just a mess of used gum and fiberboard, the one she’d arrived early to claim, was on the opposite side of the room.

            The club secretary broke the silence. “So,” he said timidly, suddenly very aware of how exposed he felt, “for the record: Angela, you want prom to happen in the gym downstairs. The saved costs will allow the student council to purchase more decorations and a catered dinner in the cafeteria. Jessica, you suggested that we rent the country club for a night and pour champagne over the pulsating abs of the bodacious strip--” The secretary cleared his throat as he flipped to the next page of notes. “And then you asked me to strike all of that from the record.” He paused again, noticeably blushing. “Jessica wants the country club. That’s it.” The humiliated boy quickly sat down and occupied himself with counting the number of pencil holes in the ceiling.

            Contrary to the desired effect, after the secretary finished his report the room was even tenser. It upset Bella to see her friends fighting like this. In one short year, she’d come to truly love them and usually whenever the three of them were together they felt like they could conquer the world. The prom disagreement had been building over the semester, though, and it had finally boiled over at the meeting today. Since the rest of the officers seemed useless for solving this dispute, she knew she had to think of something, and quick!

            Without waiting for approval to talk, Bella bolted up out of her seat. “Um, I was thinking, since we can’t decide between the gym and the country club, why don’t we, um, compromise?” The secretary shuffled some papers a little too loudly. “Angela, I love your money saving idea! And Jessica, I think we do deserve a swanky location for our very last student event. Keeping both of those desires in mind, I have a, an um, friend whose parents own a mansion right outside of town. I’m sure you all know the Cullens.” Jaws dropped. All of the secretary’s notes collided to the floor (they were blank, anyway). Bella thought she saw a tear gleaming in one of the junior member’s eyes. Slowly, Jessica and Angela turned around to face each other, at first still unsure, but as they realized that Bella had singlehandedly solved their problems, Jessica grinned and Angela stuck out her arm. They shook hands, and with that, prom planning could truly begin.

            Relieved, Bella sat back down. She wasn’t so bad at this whole diplomacy thing after all. She sent a text to Esme and Alice, even though knowing Alice’s future vision, they had probably been planning for a few days now, at least. Still, it didn’t hurt to confirm. As she got as comfortable as a mass-produced, economy high school chair and desk combination would allow, Bella felt her heart fluttering a bit. This was new. Could it be…excitement?

            Outside of the classroom window, a deliciously handsome demon of the night stood with his schnozzle squashed against the glass. It might’ve looked disconcerting, if not outright threatening, to any student council member who happened to peek out the window if Edward wasn’t a master of disguise and illusion. So, he’d found Bella, but Jacob was nowhere in sight. He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. His dad the doctor kept warning him not to let his high-strung emotions get the best of him lest he suffer a vampire heart attack someday. He was 104 years old, after all.

            Regaining his vigor, Edward scanned the minds of the student council members. No one was thinking of Jacob, but he did learn of Prom 2006: Cullen Mansion. Oh geez. He wondered who he should invite. He would ask the bears for advice when he got home. He unstuck his nose from the glass and headed toward the Quileute Reservation. He whistled, and the large shaggy dog that had been sitting by his feet pranced next to him. He had momentarily forgotten that he found the dog while tracking ‘Jacob’s’ scent trail. He’d figure out what to do with it later.


	3. limpid ombre

            Jacob sat at the beach, barely paying attention as the tide slowly rose. It was at least six feet away from him when he’d first plopped the lawn chair in the sand, but now it lightly tickled his knees. The sun was close to sinking over the horizon and it cast a warm glow across the scene, oblivious to the dark machinations going on in Jacob’s mind.

            You know, I said ‘dark’ but I didn’t really mean that. I just wanted to grab your attention! Hello, reader. My name is Tara. You don’t think I’d use my real name here, do you? Haha… How are you? Are you enjoying the story? I thought you should know that I’m doing fine. Do you like _Twilight_? I do. Or, I did once. It’s been a while. I’m recreating what these characters are like from memory! How am I doing with that? Okay, well, I’m going back to the narrative. Have a great day!

           The light level of Jacob’s thoughts (the _luminosity_ , some might say) aside, what he had mulling in his cider crockpot was distracting enough to keep him from noticing how close he was to floating away in the chilly Washington Ocean. Pacific Ocean. He wondered—don’t laugh—about what it was like to love. He was fifteen; a prime time for the onset of these kinds of thoughts. What did being in love feel like? Did it feel warm? Did it feel like pins and needles? _No_ , Jacob thought. _I don’t know why but at this moment I truly believe it feels like a cold ocean swallowing you up to your knees_.

           Jacob pondered that sensation for a moment or two longer, wondering why it seemed so incredibly relatable. He chalked it up to synchronicity or something and then had the strangest little cinnamon stick of an idea bubble up: what if his good friend Bella had a kid and then he fell in love with that kid? He attempted to squash the thought immediately with his mantra: _Jacob, this is not you. This is OCD. You may not be able to control all of your thoughts but you are certainly in control of your actions._ Once he was certain the alarming thought had been quelled, Jacob finally took stock of his surroundings.

_Oh my!_ It was a truly out-of-the-cider-pot-and-into-the-cider-fire situation! While attempting to subdue the wildly uncomfortable scenarios his brain had produced for him, the silly sea had plumb taken Jacob and his chair out with it! Any other day, Jacob would laugh and swim his way back to dry land, but he had just that morning purchased a delightful new hat. Sure, he would ruin the hat if he had to, but if there was a chance that he could get back without irreparably encrusting the brand-new fabric in salt, he was okay pausing to think about it.

           A dog bayooed from the shore. Had his pack picked up his distress call and come to his rescue? Jacob sure hated having thought projection sometimes, but if it would get him out of this pickle, he could forgive it for unwittingly showcasing the unwanted thoughts he had about peanut butter and _Wuthering Heights_ ’s own Heathcliff, among other distressing convolutions. Jacob looked up from his plastic perch for the source of the noise, seeing only a regular, nonhuman canine bounding in the surf, bordered by an intense light…

           Well, his savior didn’t have to be a fellow werewolf today. He looked over at the glimmering figure fast approaching him. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, Jacob didn’t mind seeing Edward. The vampire strode over to him (luckily Jacob hadn’t floated out too far; if Edward had sunk trying to get Jacob that would’ve unnecessarily complicated things) and swiftly picked him up in his arms. For a moment, the two locked eyes. Then Jacob came to his senses.

           “Hey! Don’t leave the chair out here!”

           “Wait, why does that matter?”

           “Excuse me, Edward! Don’t you know that plastic is fouling the world’s oceans? I hardly want to be complicit in the problem!”

           A brief sliver of a tear appeared and disappeared from Edward’s visage as quickly as he was able to scoop the waylaid chair out of the water. He nodded solemnly at Jacob’s words. “You’re so right. You speak so persuasively. A man could devote the rest of his infinite days to fighting marine pollution on the front lines for you. Also, I love your hat.”

           “Thank you, but put me down first and then let’s discuss spending eternity together.”


End file.
